Insights Hub for Enterprise Manufacturing

My main use case for Insights Hub  is understanding the machine shop floor activities and monitoring, tracing, and providing accountable solutions to customers on a daily basis, although it is very limited. Based on my experience of 1.5 years, the integration between shop floor and the MES data layer represents a major role that Insights Hub  plays. This makes it easier to integrate, configure, and analyze the data trends of shop floor activities.

A specific example of how I used Insights Hub in a real project involved monitoring a beer factory and a chocolate manufacturing line, which was a demo line. I needed to track and monitor how it would produce data, generate assets, monitor asset health, and predict new data. This gave me the realization that Insights Hub is not simply a basic tool; it is the largest cloud framework in which everything can be handled when deployed into the cloud environment, and users can utilize it according to their requirements. I feel this stands out compared to normal SCADA, MES, and even Power BI, since Power BI may be less effective than Insights Hub.

Insights Hub is a platform that is still under development because it is easier to handle, although many things need to be studied and updated. It can be extended for use over longer periods and for many projects. However, I have worked in a very limited period with limited projects, so I believe it will become a greater platform in the future.

The best features Insights Hub offers include predictive maintenance because there is a module called Predict which analyzes three months of data and provides insights for the next one hour. The integration with shop floor systems is also crucial because while we may face some delay in receiving data or may lose some data, I am currently receiving data continuously through Insights Hub unless there are major disruptions. I believe predictive maintenance and integration with the shop floor system are very easy and useful for users working on the shop floor with Insights Hub.

Insights Hub is a major tool for everything related to shop floor activities, monitoring, and providing traceable solutions. I consider this to be the best aspect of the features Insights Hub offers. It is easier and accessible to every user in a very accountable way, and we can provide access to those who require it. Insights Hub is an overall major good framework for everybody to monitor the shop floor.

In terms of positive changes in my projects after using Insights Hub, I would highlight OEE monitoring. We have Siemens Intelligence Cloud and many other tools, but in Insights Hub, OEE monitoring is very useful and attracts customers due to the user interface and the insights it provides on the shop floor.

As of now, Insights Hub is an under-developed platform, so there is no organization-level impact. We are trying to get some projects, but it has been in a dilemma state regarding whether we need to proceed with Insights Hub or use any other traditional ways of operating. However, this depends upon the customer. So far, whatever projects we have executed on Insights Hub have been completed smoothly and have been impactful for our organization.

I do not feel any challenges or frustrations with Insights Hub as of now since support has been provided by the product support team. However, I think I need some training and modular development to understand each concept and execute them effectively. I believe we need training and more integrations with Python or other interfaces to enhance Insights Hub's utility for developers compared to SCADA or similar automation tools.

Insights Hub needs to be useful for all users when interfaced with many programming languages and cloud systems. We have cloud databases as well as integration of other applications, and this is what I see as necessary improvements.

Regarding Insights Hub's AI capabilities, I think it currently lacks AI capabilities as it is not attached to AI. However, for security purposes, it provides better security to users with administrator access so that unwanted access to data can be avoided. Insights Hub needs to be integrated with AI to improve its functionality significantly.

I have been using Insights Hub for the past one and a half years.

In my experience, Insights Hub is stable, as I rated it an eight out of ten, but it needs a lot of improvement.

Insights Hub's scalability is promising as I believe it is scalable for all users, from those who have recently joined the organization to the experts. It does not limit access to just a specific group of people, making it quite resourceful for a wider audience in the organization.

Insights Hub's customer support receives a rating of four out of five because we have very limited support, considering Insights Hub offers many solutions and some of them do not have supporting ticketing tools. Overall, I find it good at four out of five.

Before Insights Hub, I primarily used Siemens Intelligence Cloud and Power BI, along with many other dashboarding tools. However, Insights Hub offers everything in a single framework and it is accessible on the cloud. It has features that are useful for future shop floor activities, which drove our decision to switch from our previous solutions to Insights Hub for its scalability and ease of integration with the shop floor.

My advice to others looking into using Insights Hub is that it is suitable for all users in an organization with the required prerequisite features and basic functionalities for shop floor integration with data, driving analytics, and enabling predictive maintenance. This would be the best feasible approach for initial shop floor activity maintenance. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Insights Hub  is used for monitoring equipment in the plant, mainly for OEE calculation. Within Insights Hub , Mendix  has an application called OEE Hub, which allows me to connect the machines to the platform, meaning the machine has status, has speeds, and has production orders. I connect all that information to Insights Hub, and from OEE Hub, I can see the OEE metrics.

One of the best features that Insights Hub offers is that it is agnostic, meaning it has the ability, with its connectors, to link practically any type of machine that exists in the market to the platform and to monitor it.

Normally, companies have machines from various manufacturers, and the agnostic capability of Insights Hub has benefited my company by allowing communication with a variety of machines, including Mitsubishi, Toshiba, and those that speak the Allen-Bradley protocol or Schneider protocol, Modbus TCP. Given that great variety and diversity of machines, the main characteristic of Insights Hub is that it allows me to talk to that diversity of machines, and therefore I can extract data from them and monitor my plant without needing to use additional developments or additional configurations.

Insights Hub has the possibility of being able to integrate with Mendix , and given that Mendix is a versatile and powerful development platform, Insights Hub has positively impacted my organization by allowing the creation of infinite solutions within Insights Hub, combined with Mendix. The impact has been realized because of the OEE of the plant. Line seven of a bottling plant in Jalisco is the one I am referring to, and for confidentiality reasons, I could not be giving more details about the plants, but evidently, there has been an impact and a positive change.

Insights Hub has a connection with Grafana , but I would like it to be improved.

I have been using Insights Hub for five years.

I gave Insights Hub a rating of nine out of ten.